The Art of NOT Letting the Dogs Out!!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

We have the same thing happen here night after night.  It reminds me of the movie, Groundhog Day, where the guy keeps waking up to find the same day repeated over and over. 

In our case, it is just the last hour before bedtime, so our movie would be called Bedtime Hour.  Every single night, without fail, John comes to bed, gets in, opens his Kindle, settles in, and within minutes, here comes Vern, wanting to go out.  Almost always, this moment happens during the last ten minutes of some fabulous show I have been watching and as I am sitting there awaiting the conclusion of the show.  I then say to John, “did you take the dogs out before you came to bed?” and he gets the same stunned look on his face every single night and he answers back with one of several excuses that he keeps on hand for just such an occasion.

I swear he has a script he has concocted since we got Fudge and Vern and he just tries to mix up his excuses to keep me on my toes and not say the same thing two nights in a row.  The same thing happens in my family for why no one but me will empty the dishwasher and I think my favorite excuse of all time was when he said he didn’t empty it one day because I was taking a nap and he was afraid he would wake me up.   Our bedroom is not that close to the kitchen and the only thing I could come up with to make sense of this excuse was he planned on spinning all the plates, bowls, and cups like you see in some of those acrobatic acts and he was worried about the outcome as he spun them from a pole or his finger to the shelf. 

 

Anyways, I know I should play hardball at this point and demand he take Vern out, but then we go through more secondary excuses as Vern sits there with his legs crossed trying to hold everything in and his eyes turning yellow.  Like a marionette doll being controlled by a puppeteer, I get up, although I will say I am louder than most dolls, and take Vern out.  There are just some things that trigger a fast response in me and telling me you have to go to the bathroom, especially in my car, turns me into Danica Patrick running the Indianapolis 500. 

Although it has never actually happened, I have an irrational fear that while I am weaving through cars on the Beltway trying to locate a bathroom, my passenger will turn to me and say, “You can slow down now. It is too late!’ and I will have to immediately pull over and post a sign on my car, For Sale, As Is! and find another way home.  The same feeling comes over me when someone tells me there is no bathroom where we are going and from that moment on, I wouldn’t drink one drop of any liquid even if I landed in the Sahara Desert for a sweating contest. The point all this is making is that when someone, person or dog, has to go to the bathroom, there should be a sense of urgency rather than a nod in that person’s or dog’s direction and a “he’s fine,” and back to doing what you were doing.

 

John isn’t the only member of my family guilty of ignoring a request to go out and potty.  My daughter, Megan, when we visited Portland, seemed inclined to ignore her dogs, too.  I don’t want to scream out “neglect”, but even though I have not seen my grand dogs in three years and this is actually the first time I met little Jazz, I could tell immediately I knew them better than my daughter.  Unfortunately, my best efforts kept getting me in trouble and a couple of times she got more than irritated and said, “They don’t need to go out. They just moved to get a better look at their crazy Grandma!” She all but told me to mind my own business and once when I woke up to find Jazz staring at me, I mouthed to him, “Grandma’s here. I’ll sneak you out to go potty.”  

 

Help me, Grandma!  I have to go potty!

All that was easier said than done when her house seemed booby-trapped to catch me in the act and she did, when I tripped over something on the way out the door.  Luckily for Bonzai, after I woke him up, Grandma was there to make sure he got to go out, too. 

Thank you, Grandma!

In the morning, she didn’t even have the courtesy to thank me for my efforts, but seemed to have some cockamamie theory that Vern has me so well trained that she thinks I automatically wake up once in the middle of the night and look around for a dog that needs to go out.  I’ll remember that when she starts having children and maybe I’ll just keep all my expertise to myself to teach her a lesson.

In all fairness to Vern, he has gotten so much better about the middle of the night potty breaks and I think if he is willing to make that one concession, the least we can do is take him out before we fall asleep.  I just keep trying to think where the best place would be to write ‘TAKE THE DOGS OUT NOW. YES, THAT MEANS YOU!” to get John’s attention.  Maybe the bathroom mirror, because ironically that is the last place he visits before he comes to bed, although I wouldn’t put it past him to say, “I didn’t take the dogs out because you were sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you up,” right after I say, “why can’t you remember to take the dogs out so I don’t have to get up?” One of these days, our Bedtime Hour movie is going to have a different ending.

[Bonnie and Kona]

PS: The Frenchies are darling and I'm glad that they know their g-ma can be counted on. My granddog knows that I don't believe they feed her enough so we ( the granddog and I) always make sure I give her extra!

[Bonnie and Kona]

I loved this blog. Most of all I loved the photo of sweet Vern. Those EYES! How could you not do anything he might want?

My DH told me when we had our first baby, "Night time is for sleeping." He has maintained that stance for decades now. If a dog has to go out, I have to take it. If a dog pukes, I have to clean it. Night time is for DH to be sleeping. Clearly it's not for ME to be sleeping. Maybe all DH's have this figured out. I don't want to know if that's not true.

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

Damn, I'm reading this at 1:12am in bed and now I have to get all untucked and get up to go...
I should have waited to read this over coffee tomorrow

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Perhaps we need to infuse some of The Shining into our movie endings.  What do you think?

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Love this!!! And it is soooo very true.  I always feel that I am on vacation when we come HOME from an RV trip because I can let the dogs use the doggy door and I don't have to get up, get dressed, leash 'em up, and wald a quarter mile to the dog potty area.  Skip doesn't even make excuses on those RV  late nights or early morning requests - he just pretends to be asleep, even when Ned jumps on him, dances around chortling with a toy dangling from his mouth. Re-ally? Sleeping through that?  How about Clancy thumping his tail against the wall?  Sleep through that?  Right!

[Camilla and Darwin]

LOL Laurie. I would like to say that I agree with Megan... but I'm a bit afraid of what you would do so I won't say that. He he. Dogs certainly know who's strings to pull when don't they? :-)

As far as taking Vern out before bed - you should try to hack his kindle to not display the book until he's pressed a statement saying that he's taken Vern out. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Since I am the only around here who ever, ever takes Jackdoodle out, it's hard to muster up much sympathy here. No reading or watching TV in bed for me anyway, so JD goes out and then we go to bed and to sleep. However, since I have a dog who never asks to go out and holds it until I tell him that he has to go, I do have a small amount of sympathy for anyone whose dog actually wakes them in the middle of the night needing a potty break. I can see where it would be necessary to have a husband under those circumstances. 

[F, Calla & Luca]

As to the fabulous show my answer is always the same ---DVR. With two dogs, one of me, telephone calls and other intrusions I would never see the whole of anything without one. Sometimes I think having no one else to blame things on is far easier. I do it or it doesn't get done. The dogs haven't done a lick of work since day 1. Well I take that back. Calla at least does exactly that, a lick of work when she is searching for crumbs : )